In this blog I present the results of my research into the landowning families of the British Isles and the country houses which they owned. Comments, especially in the form of corrections, additional information or new illustrations, are very welcome. Please use the Contact Form in the right hand side bar to contact me privately or the comments facility at the bottom of the page to make a public comment.

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Saturday, 23 February 2013

(4) Abdy of Albyns, baronets - part 1

Abdy of Felix Hall coat of arms

In
the 15th and 16th centuries, the family lived at Abdy at Wath-upon-Dearne
(Yorks). In the later 16th century they became London merchants and the sons of
Roger Abdy (d. 1595) moved into the professions and began the transition to
gentry status and land ownership. Edmund Abdy (1561-1626) acquired the manor of
Belgar in Kent and his son, Sir Christopher Abdy (c.1598-1679) added to this
property at Streatham (Surrey) and Uxbridge (Middx) which he bequeathed to his
cousin, Sir Thomas Abdy of Felix Hall (Essex). Edmund’s younger brother,
Anthony Abdy (1579-1640), a clothworker and East India merchant, bought Felix
Hall, Kelvedon (Essex) and other property in Essex and Middlesex which he
bequeathed among his sons, three of whom became baronets. Sir Thomas Abdy
(1612-86), the eldest son, inherited Felix Hall; Sir Robert Abdy (1616-70)
first rented and later bought Albyns, Stapleford Abbots (Essex) and adjacent
manors; and Sir John Abdy (1617-62) inherited the manor of Moores at Salcot
(Essex), but dying without issue, bequeathed this too to his brother Robert.

From
the mid 17th century there were thus two branches of the family, settled
respectively at Felix Hall and Albyns. Sir Robert Abdy, the younger brother,
remodelled and improved Albyns, and bequeathed it to his son, Sir John Abdy
(c1643-91). His heir, who inherited aged 3, was Sir Robert Abdy (1688-1748), MP
for Essex, 1727-48 and an active Jacobite. He was a Fellow of the Society of
Antiquaries, and was described by Morant in his History of Essex
as “a man of deep knowledge in antiquity and natural history, [and] a great
connoisseur in medals, of which he had a fine collection”. At his death he was
succeeded by his son Sir John Abdy (c.1714-59), who had a London house (36
Lincolns Inn Fields) designed by Sir Robert Taylor and probably also employed
Taylor to remodel Albyns. At Sir John’s death in 1759, however, he was
unmarried: the baronetcy became extinct and the Albyns estate passed first to
his aunt, Jane Crank (d. c.1765), then to his kinsman Sir Anthony Thomas Abdy
(d. 1775), who briefly united the estates of both branches of the family.

Sir
Thomas Abdy of Felix Hall, although educated as a gentleman (he travelled in
France and Italy, 1632-5), practised as a lawyer. His son, Sir Anthony
(1655-1704), married the grand-daughter and eventual heiress of Sir Anthony
Thomas (d. 1641) of Chobham (Surrey), a match which in the 1720s brought his
son, Sir Anthony Thomas Abdy (1688-1733) both Chobham Place and the Horselydown
estate at Rotherhithe on the south bank of the Thames. Sir A.T. Abdy, again a
working lawyer, bequeathed his Essex estates to his two daughters, and the
Chobham and Rotherhithe properties to his younger brother and heir, Sir William
Abdy (1689-1750). Felix Hall passed to Charlotte Abdy (1723-1802), wife of John
Williams Onslow of Tendring Hall (Essex). They partially rebuilt the house but
got into debt, and both Felix Hall and Tendring Hall were sold by Act of
Parliament in 1761.

Sir
William (d. 1750) and his son, Sir Anthony Thomas Abdy (d. 1775) seem both to
have lived mainly in London. Sir William is known to have been active in the
Jacobite cause, and both men acted as legal agents for prominent Jacobite
figures. They developed the Horselydown estate, which became a major source of
the family’s wealth by the later 18th century. Sir Anthony Thomas Abdy (d.
1775) eventually overcame official suspicion about his Jacobite sympathies and
was MP for Knaresborough, 1763-75. In the 1760s he inherited a life interest in
the estates of the Albyns branch of the family, and he also inherited
Twickenham Park (Middx) under the will of Diana, Countess of Mountrath (d.
1766). At his death, the Albyns estate passed to his nephew, Thomas Abdy
Rutherforth (1755-98); his other property passed to his younger brother, Sir
William Abdy (c1732-1803), who rebuilt Chobham Place but whose son and heir,
Sir William Abdy (c1779-1868) sold the estate in 1809. He married Anne
Wellesley (d. 1842), an illegitimate daughter of the 1st Marquess Wellesley,
from whom he was divorced by Act of Parliament in 1816, and dying without
legitimate issue, the baronetcy of Felix Hall became extinct.

The
Rev. Thomas Abdy Rutherforth (1755-98) took the name Abdy on inheriting the
Albyns estate in 1775, and bequeathed the property to his son, John Rutherforth
Abdy, who married the eldest daughter of James Hatch of Clayberry Hall (Essex)
and sometimes used the name Hatch-Abdy. He carried out a number of estate
improvements and may have employed Humphry Repton to remodel the grounds of
Albyns, as the house was depicted by Repton in Peacock’s Polite
Repository in 1801. Hatch-Abdy had no children, and at his death the Albyns
estate passed to his nephew, Thomas Neville Abdy (1810-77) who was MP for Lyme
Regis, 1847-52 and was created a baronet in 1850. The manor of Theydon Garnons
was sold to T.C. Chisenhale-Marsh of Gaynes Park in 1858, but at the death of
his kinsman, Sir William Abdy, in 1868, Sir Thomas inherited the Horselydown
property in London, which was now a highly profitable area of warehouses and
industry on the south side of the River Thames. After his death, the estate
passed to his eldest son, Sir William Neville Abdy (1844-1910), who died
childless, and then in quick succession to Sir Anthony Sykes Abdy (1848-1921)
and Sir Henry Beadon Abdy (1853-1921). Sir Henry’s eldest surviving son and
heir was Sir Robert Henry Edward Abdy (1896-1976), who sold the Albyns estate
in 1926. Some of the interiors were later moved to the United States, and the
house itself was damaged by bombing in World War II and finally demolished in
1954. Sir Robert bought Newton Ferrers (Cornw) in 1936 and redecorated it in a
sharply fashionable Art Deco style, but the house was burnt in 1940 and not
fully restored thereafter. Sir Henry’s son, Sir Valentine Abdy (1937-2012),
sold Newton Ferrers in the 1990s and lived mainly in France, as does the
present baronet, Sir Robert Etienne Eric Abdy, 7th bt. (b. 1978).

Felix Hall, Kelvedon, Essex

Felix Hall in an engraving of 1773 from A new display of the beauties of England

The
present house succeeds one occupied by the Abdys from the early 17th century
onwards. It was begun c.1710 for Sir Anthony Thomas Abdy as a seven bay house
with a pedimented centre, to which wings were added c.1750. Grandiose
neo-classical alterations were made c.1825 by Thomas Hopper for C.C. Western of
Rivenhall Place. He stuccoed the house, embellished the north-west front with
giant Doric pilasters and attached columns, and gave the south-east front a
noble Ionic tetrastyle portico, based on the Temple of Fortuna Virilis in Rome.
The wings have gone, taken down by Geoffrey Houghton-Brown in 1939, and a year
later the remainder was gutted by fire. Houghton-Brown roofed over the northern
portion at first-floor level and the same was done to the southern portion by
Milner Gray of the Design Research Unit after 1953, leaving the main entrance
hall behind the portico open to the sky as a courtyard between two flat-roofed
two-storey wings within the shell. Houghton-Brown also converted the mid 18th
century rear service wing (now The Orangery) and the stables (now Clock House)
in 1939: both have six bays of windows set in arched recesses. Clock House has
a central pedimented bay, originally the carriage entrance, with an octagonal
domed timber clock tower, copper dome, and domed bell-turret. Humphry Repton
was consulted about improvements to the park in 1793, immediately after Western
purchased the estate; the winding approach may be due to him.

Albyns, Stapleford Abbots, Essex

The east and south ranges of the house built for Sir John Wood
after he acquired the estate in 1587 were incorporated into a quadrangular
brick house of two storeys and gabled attics built for his son-in-law, Sir
Thomas Edmunds, c.1620, which had elaborate plasterwork decoration attributed to James Leigh. The interiors were given additional panelling after Sir
Robert Abdy bought the house in 1654, and the house was remodelled in 1754,
when it was given bay windows and sash windows with octagonal glazing bars to
the designs of Sir Robert Taylor. In 1898-1901 the house was modernised by
Nevinson & Newton for Sir William Neville Abdy, but it was thereafter
usually let and the Abdys sold up in the 1920s, when many of the fittings were
removed to the USA
(the Long Gallery is now Jack’s Bar in The Cannery, Fisherman’s Wharf, San
Francisco) and the north front was mutilated; then in 1945 the house was
damaged by a rocket bomb. It was finally demolished in 1954, when further
fittings were relocated. There remains a section of garden wall terminating in
a low square pavilion with an ogival roof, and the former service range (now
Albyns Manor) that was separated from the house by a yard. This is early 17th
century brick, with straight gables and mullioned windows, and has an original
northern cross-wing and a 20th century southern cross-wing. This house contains
part of the staircase from Albyns, with flat openwork strap decoration and
square newels with moulded finials. To the east is an 18th century brick
coach-house, built on an H-plan, with clock tower and hexagonal cupola. There
is a 19th century octagonal brick lodge to the north-west.

3 comments:

The only way to find out for sure is to trace your ancestry backwards and see whether it connects up with the people mentioned here. Abdy is an unusual name and seems originally to have been given to people who came from the hamlet of Abdy at Wath-upon-Dearne (Yorks WR), so they are not necessarily all related.

The only way to find out for sure is to trace your ancestry backwards and see whether it connects up with the people mentioned here. Abdy is an unusual name and seems originally to have been given to people who came from the hamlet of Abdy at Wath-upon-Dearne (Yorks WR), so they are not necessarily all related.

About Me

I was educated at St Paul's School in London and Keble College, Oxford and went on to train as an archivist in the world-famous Bodleian Library. I spent 37 years as a professional archivist, and was Chairman of the National Council on Archives from 2001 to 2005, and Head of Archives Sector Development and Secretary of the Historical Manuscripts Commission at the National Archives from 2005 until I retired in May 2015.

Alongside my professional career I have also been an architectural historian of the country house. This is a passion nurtured at Oxford, where I was President of the University Architectural Society. Between 1989 and 2001 my three volume study of The country houses of Gloucestershire was published, and my distinctive contribution has been to put together the evidence for the history of country houses and landed estates that can be gleaned from family archives and genealogy with the evidence from the buildings themselves, to tell a richer narrative than any of these sources alone can provide. I am now embarked on an ambitious blog (http://landedfamilies.blogspot.co.uk), which aims to tell the story of every landed family in the British Isles and their country houses. If I continue working hard until I am a centenarian I might finish the job!

Since one big project is never enough, I am also involved as a Trustee and volunteer with the Victoria County History of England, which aims to tell the story of every English village and town, and I do some advisory work for the National Trust, which looks after so many of the country houses I care passionately about.

I have been married for 37 years to my precious and special wife Mary, who mercifully tolerates my obsessions and collections, and even my cooking.